A woman turned to a natural enemy of bacteria to save husband’s life
cnn.com
cnn.com
No antibiotics worked, so this woman turned to phage scientists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32036825 - July 2022 (99 comments)
- narrow range: phages have very specific host requirements, i.e. they usually work only on very specific subtypes of bacteria. This means you will need to spend a significant effort on finding a matching phage to a given pathogenic bacterial strain. It's almost a type of personalized medicine. Antibiotics on the other hand are usually very broad and work on a wide range of strains.
- Resistance to phages: bacteria are much more adapted to deal with phages than with antibiotics. Bacteria can become immune to phages within a couple of generations, for antibiotics it takes significantly longer. So if the first problem can be overcome (a broadly acting phage cocktail), resistance will be an even bigger problem than with antibiotics. Fun fact: the well known CRISPR system used for genetic engineering originally stems from such a bacterial system that deals with phage immunity.
- Manufacturing: antibiotics can rely on well established protocols for large scale production on the cheap mainly relying on chemical synthesis. Phages on the other hand will be needed to grow in a bacterial host culture (you can't build them synthetically) and will need extensive purification steps. You don't want to intravenously inject any bacterial remnants into a patient. Add to that the large diversity of phages with ever changing host requirements and it becomes a nightmare for production.
> Then she convinced phage scientists around the country to hunt and peck through molecular haystacks of sewage, bogs, ponds, the bilge of boats and other prime breeding grounds for bacteria and their viral opponents. The impossible goal: quickly find the few, exquisitely unique phages capable of fighting a specific strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria literally eating her husband alive.
> Next, the US Food and Drug Administration had to greenlight this unproven cocktail of hope, and scientists had to purify the mixture so that it wouldn’t be deadly.
> Yet just three weeks later, Strathdee watched doctors intravenously inject the mixture into her husband’s body – and save his life.
In Georgia they do this all the time. For me the oddest thing about the article is how little Georgia was involved.
There's your answer. The author even quoted someone in the conclusion who said that this was only possible due to her position and connections.
So it's exactly the opposite of what you suppose, this is someone who's intensely trained and skilled.
The Texas institute had already been working on using phages to cure infections with the same bacteria in mice, and it sounds like they were in a position to start human trials. It's not like they invented the therapy on the spot.
So when the patients wife showed up, and took care of all the bureaucratic issues (like getting compassionate use authorization), they knew exactly what they had to do.
I think the story shows what a competent manager can achieve.
Considering how antibiotics are being increasingly rendered ineffective we'd be well served by the government investing in more research on how to make it more viable so that we have better treatment options going forward.